


spill a song for your dress

by kimaracretak



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Background Whitney/Peggy/Dottie, Dream Sex, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, Gunplay, Handcuffs, Object Insertion, Outdoor Sex, POV First Person, Post-Canon, Unhealthy Relationships, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-06-22 00:35:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15569850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: Whitney waits, and Whitney dies, and neither of those things are quite true.





	spill a song for your dress

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Wavesinger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/gifts).



> _Spill a song for your dress_  
>  Celebrate in the shade  
> — 'Tumescence', Helms Alee
> 
> Ich lecke die Liebe aus deinem Gesicht,  
> Ich lecke den Haß aus deinem Gesicht  
> — 'Der Tanz Der Schatten', Theatre of Tragedy
> 
> Beta'd by @solanaceae

She visits me all the time now. I mark time by her visits, because Lord knows I don't have sunlight or regular meals or anything else to use. I don't even have human guards half the time, they're all too scared of me still. Maybe that's how she gets in so often.

 _Whitney, Whitney_ , she presses her face to the tiny window in my cell door; _Whitney, Whitney, why do you gotta act so pretty for them, don't you wanna act for me instead?_

I was so close to breaking her, and she still comes back again and again and again. I wouldn't learn until later how hard it is to break something already broken, but I would always want to try anyway. If anyone could do it, I definitely could.

The thing is, I don't think she thinks I'm mad. Even Peggy thought I was, by the end, or maybe she was just happy enough to tell them that so they'd take me away and she wouldn't have to look at me no more. I know what I showed her - all her insides, all her lost futures, all the things the world took away from me.

From us.

I don't know what she saw. Enough, I guess, and it made her so mad it was worth it even when she turned all that rage against me when the world was right there waiting for it instead. I never got the chance to tell her I was afraid too, at the start, and that it was all worth it in the end, but I'm starting to think that maybe that's fine.

Starting to think a lot of things, now that I understand I don't need her anymore. Peggy would have been lovely, of course. But Dottie's near enough the same if you think about it. I told her that once and she laughed and laughed and laughed til the pride near killed me, and then she kissed me, which is how I knew it was a dream.

Oh, it was a good dream.

Both of them whip-smart and pretty and fair bursting with how good they are since they don't have a stage that lets them let it all out. I wanted to give them that stage, and neither of them could see it, and now it's too late for that plan, much too late.

Not too late for other things, though.

 

**

 

Dottie's hands fit through the door, through the little window flap cut in it that's my only reminder that something's outside these walls, that these walls aren't just in my head.

Well, aren't _only_ in my head. Walls never exist just in one place, I learned that young, but if they were going to be _only_ somewhere they'd be only in my head, where I can keep them safe.

Thin wrists, thin fingers, and she's in here with me, in parts. Parts like the world always wanted us in, easier to parcel out and sell that way. I let that happen to me because I needed to, but I don't want it to happen to her. Not anymore than she's already been cut up, at least. And not by anyone that's not me, that's for damn sure. Peggy may have given up on the both of us, but I still want all of Dottie, and that's why we're gonna win.

It's because when her hands come creeping sly into my cell she lets me take each finger into my mouth, one by one, and I trace the whorls of her fingerprints and taste acid remnants from where she's burnt and changed them. It's because I know all the girls she ever was when I taste her like that, and it's because I know she wants me too, shivering against the door like she thinks the fact that I can't see more than her face means I don't know she's fingering herself under her dress.

If she wanted to fool me for real she wouldn't offer me that hand, too, after, or at least she'd wipe it off somewhere first. But she doesn't, so I learn the taste of her new self: bittersweet and sharp and mine, even if neither of us knew it then.

I don't think she trusts me. I don't think it matters.

I'm not sure what matters anymore, but something must, if she keeps coming back.

 

**

 

She does my makeup, hands sure as if I was back in my trailer. Slides her fingers through the slits in the door with tubes and paints so I can't suck at them with sharp teeth instead of a kiss.

I've memorised her fingers by now, though, moved on to wanting her mouth, so I let her.

There's not much to be done for the hair. I've tried, of course. Rubbed the ends into the chalk that gathers in the corners of my little home, prised bits of brick from the walls and crushed them red against my scalp til my hands were stained and maybe even bleeding.

But the black's here to stay, curly-streaky like the lines of zero matter that used to crawl under my skin. The reminder of what I lost: I think that's what usually makes me want to die, to fling myself against the nearest surface til I've flown all apart, gone to join the atoms that used to give me so much power.

‘Cept the nearest surface is Dottie, more often than not, and Dottie fondles the black streaks, twirls them round and round her fingers til they're real curls, puts the strands between her lips and flicks her tongue out like she can paint it her own.

That's the other makeup she does, and I don't know what either of us want from it, I just know that neither of us know how to stop.

The third kind of makeup is blood. We're not gonna get to it for a while but we both know. No use pretending otherwise, especially when there's so much pretending everywhere else.

So I wait. Not very patiently and not very well, but I wait.

 

**

 

I waited so long that Peggy came and when she did she was wearing Dottie's hair all in black like mine was turning and I didn't expect to cry when she told me she'd taken it right off Dottie's head so I didn't but I was sad instead, sadder than I thought I would be, and I think Peggy knew it because she smiled in that strange sad way she had and said something like, _it was always gonna be that way for us, sweetheart_ , and by the time she cut my throat and left me there for them to find she was all Dottie, not Peggy at all, and I was satisfied because that meant Dottie wouldn't have to find me.

I waited so long that my machine built itself back up in my head, piece by piece by piece, like maybe only Peggy thought I might be able to because she was the only one smart enough to know that brains meant memory too, the only one who saw that I'd gained memories and the ability to stay in them instead of losing brains, and because she saw this in me I spared her when the world ended, and then let it end again before I had to decide whether I regretted that.

I waited so long that Dottie came back and broke open the door, impatient little thing but with a flair that's all hers alone and meant we could have been stars together, who cares if it was stage or sky, but here in my little room all that mattered was how she took off my dress, how she nipped at my lips and sucked at my breasts like she wanted to draw all the zero matter out of me, all the parts and pieces still swimming in me just waiting for the moment she shoved her fingers inside me, curling dry against my insides even though I was wet enough for both of us, even though I wasn't sure I wanted this from her, but she was rough and she let me bite her back and by the time I realised her fingers were a gun I didn't even care because it felt so good stretching my cunt like no man ever could.

I waited so long that I died alone, as alone as I could be when there was so much power under my skin, racing through my bones, clawing at the veil that she slammed down in between us because she was just one more person who wanted to rob me, use me, take all my power and not even have the decency to do anything with it, just destroyed it so no one could have it but I refused to be locked away again so I died in a cell and I don't think Peggy was happy, even, I don't know if she ever even knew and maybe that was the worst of all.

 

**

 

She does come back though, and it's not like always because this time she fights. This time I hear the shots, taste the blood in the air, feel it collecting at the back of my tongue.

I don't know why it's different this time, but I'm ready all the same.

There's blood in her hair when she unlocks my door and I reach for it first, wanting to pull her towards me, feel her all against me. To slide down her skin, find the cracks and push my fingers in like I always used to do with the characters in my scripts.

Dottie would be better, though. Dottie has flesh on the insides, bits that'd come out and cover me, make me over for a new life. I never got to play girls like that, even though I became one of them so long ago.

"Now, now." She gathers my hands in hers, kisses the knuckles feather-light. Why's she being so nice to me? Her hands are so, so clean, and mine aren't right now, but she kisses them anyway like she knows where we both came from.

So it's like this, red lips on chalk-smeared white. Her mouth always was filthier than her hands, even when I wanted them both equally.

"We're going on a little trip, you and I," she says, and then her lips are on mine. Kissing me for real, iron and mint and more teeth than it seems like anyone has a right to. Now that we're both awake I can hear her, tiny little gasps and no manners at all, just her tongue in my mouth like she isn't afraid I'll bite it off.

I want her to be afraid of me, but I don't want her to stop kissing me. My back hits the wall before I've figured out how to resolve that. "I didn't need you to get out," is all I say, stalling for time in the spaces between kisses where we might not be breathing.

"No," she says, and I should have known, even before the click of the cuffs around my wrist. "But you need me now."

She isn't right, but I stay quiet anyway as she changes me into the prim blue cotton dress she's brought, just in case.

 

**

 

She drives. I don't know why it surprises me, when I've seen her do so much stranger, so much worse. Maybe it's because she's the most dangerous of all here behind the wheel, socially acceptable if you don't look too close, if you don't mind her tailored suit and rakish hat.

A perfect gentleman.

My perfect gentleman.

My perfect everything.

M i n e, candy-sweet on my tongue, the word and her fingers both. She's clever, Dottie is, only needs one hand to drive. Personally I think she just likes it better that I'm quieter when I've got her fingers in my mouth, but that just makes it harder for her to stay quiet. I can hear her over the wind.

I'm not sure a human should.

It was easier to be human inside the walls; there's so much outside and I can feel myself expanding to meet it, dark and more like Peg thought I shouldn't be. There's more to to take, outside, and Dottie's always been so eager to give.

She drives me to an empty lot, police tape fluttering like ribbons in the Santa Ana winds. For a moment I wonder if she's brought me here to kill me, daylight be damned. She's crazy enough for it, even without the winds that blow you just so sideways from yourself that you don't quite end up wrong.

But she just parks the car, gets out and even opens my door for me with a little bow. I think about my fingers at her throat, harder than bruising, and her gun in my cunt, colder than her heart and mine together, and I think maybe the long forgotten shiver that runs through me as she grips the chain of the cuffs and leads me to the gate is disappointment.

Maybe it's just anticipation.

 

**

 

There's something hungry in the field beyond and it's not just us. The broken earth sings of bones and blood, and I can't breathe right. There's death in the weeds and I'm the happiest I've been in so long.

"They killed an actress here, last week," she says conversationally. Her back is to me, wisps of hair starting to drift down from her bun.

Trust. Stupidity. Doesn't matter.

She's here with me and she's not leaving without me, even if she wants to.

"Must not have been a very good actress, then." My voice is dry as the air, but it's true: the first thing you gotta learn is how to play dead. Isn't nobody who can kill what's already dead, and that's why Dottie can never scare me anymore.

I'm starting to think that's why I can't scare her back.

"Do you wanna see the pictures? Maybe she was a friend of yours." _I know something you don't know_ , as if I care anymore. As if I ever did.

"Why'd you bring me here, Dot? Sending me to join her?"

I wish she'd try, just so I could see her face when she couldn't. I wish she'd killed the other one, so it would be a double fall for her when my skin split under her knife and all that happened was she fell inside.

I hadn't seen the knife until she turned around just now, but it changes so much less than she thinks.

I turn and walk away just to prove it, further into the lot, and I can feel it as my stockings tear, as I sink into the sharp, messy ground that kisses my feet with as much violence as Dottie kisses my mouth. I can hear her following me, deeper into our own world.

The metal chafes against my wrists, but I can't bend them yet. Not strong enough yet, not enough of the right kinda of darks and lights in my room, under the sky.

Soon, though. She's following me, and that's good. Real good, when the only sound is skin against earth.

Her knife's still out when I turn around. I want it inside me, anyway, need to be filled and fucked and freed and she knows, holding back anyway trying to figure out if it makes me hate her.

I always did hate being a disappointment, but hatred's too simple, and I'm getting bored waiting for her to figure it out.

I raise my chin, bare my neck. In the wind my hair is like a living thing, half strangling me. Damned if I'll die before I know what we want each other to be. "What now?"

 

**

 

"Lie down," she says, like just because my hands are bound she suddenly gets to give orders. She let me out, she gets to live with that.

So instead I smile, and curl my toes against the mud and grass and broken glass, and say, "No."

"Down." I love her most when she's this side of dangerous, when she wants to get her hands on me but isn't sure what she wants to do.

I run my tongue across my lips, taste the lipstick she painted on me hardly an hour ago. It tastes like her. It could be her. _I_ could be her. "Why?"

She steps closer, just half a step but enough for me to reach her belt. She flinches when my hands close around the leather, and I can see the regret in her eyes. What did she expect, tying my hands in front?

She doesn't fall though, flat shoes catching on the ground. Only falls into me, burning up, the flat edge of the knife ending up pressed against my hip.

"Do something," I whisper.

An order, a dare. I've gone first, or that's what I would have said if either of us still had to count. Numbers fall away when you have forever and a day.

She smiles, and even that's something. It's enough, as long as she's playing. As long as she's with me. Anything she does to me she'll get back twice over; she knows it and I'm counting on her wanting it even if she doesn't know when.

I'm right, like I always am. She takes off the jacket, spreads it on the ground with a flourish. "Won't you at least sit down?" She says, and she doesn't bat her eyelashes but it's a close thing. "Only I went to an awful lot of trouble pulling you out of that hole, darling, and I'm beat."

I almost don't, just to see if she'll push me. Just to see how much we'll hurt today.

But it's better to play along, sometimes, I need to remember that. Need to practise, now I have someone else to play to again. Need to wait, even though my cut-glass nipples under the dress she chose for me are aching to be pinched.

So I sit. Careful-casual like I'm not unbalanced by how she's bound me. Used to be gravity couldn't touch me, now I have to bend around it as I lower myself to the ground. Let my hands drift to the sash around my waist as I do, cuffed hands unable to reach my buttons.

"Why, Miss Underwood," and the breathiness of my voice isn't even faked and I think that might be the thing that makes me dead. "Are you asking for a reward?"

She straddles my lap, eyes bright and lips wet. "I would never ask."

 

**

 

The knife's hidden again by the time her frantic kisses pause. She's got her hands on me again, like she's wanted since the moment she last took them away and like I'll want forever, and my breasts are spilling out from where she's ripped my bodice half to pieces. I can feel the heat of her all against me, one human-shaped fire burning and burning and the only relief is the sharp, cold stabs of pain as she twists my nipples between long-nailed fingers.

"Is this what you planned?" I can't resist asking. I can see her gun now that I'm lying on her coat, and I can't stop thinking about that one dream, the best dream.

"Depends. Is it planning, if you always knew it was gonna end up like this?"

 _Liar_ , I almost say, _you didn't know me that well_ , except I'd known, even if I hadn't known the place, so maybe she's right. Maybe it is possible to be that far inside someone, inside their head.

Maybe that's why she doesn't move when I go for her gun. Doesn't even flinch, even as tiny as Peggy did when she first saw what I was doing. It takes half the fun away before we've even started.

"Know it?" I turn the gun over in my hand, around and around. It feels too light to be loaded, but she's always been one for tricks. "Or did you only dream it, just like me?"

I press the muzzle into her stomach, feel the dip and fold as it finds her navel and sticks, catching on the buttons of her shirt. She whimpers, and I know right then that whatever other sounds she makes at my hands this will be the best, because it was the first.

I press hard, hard enough to bruise - I'll get my tongue on it once it does, I know already, the image of a bruise ringed round her navel just waiting for me to dip my tongue inside so close I can practically taste it.

I can't taste her yet, though. Can only see her, eyes shut and a tiny pleased smile playing across her lips. Can only smell her, hot and wet against my thighs as if my stockings weren't already ruined.

She doesn't think I'll shoot. I'm not so sure.

"Well." She swallows hard. "I know I've had this dream before, at least."

I want to dream with her, asleep or awake. We're so close already that it wouldn't be fair if we didn't.

"What else did I do in your dream?" I ask softly. Twist the gun a little deeper into her middle just to see what other sounds I can get her to make. "Fuck you? Kill you? Throw you to Peggy and let her have her way with you?"

Her fingers keep twisting in my dress the longer I talk but only the last gets her to moan. I can't blame her, it's a thought whose appeal wars only with the appeal of having Dottie all to myself.

Then again, she's an actress too, better than half the girls I've shared a stage with, and what's the point of being an actress if there's no one to shine a light on you?

 

**

 

The lot isn't a real stage, not the ones I'm used to. I've never had an audience of open sky and the memory of a corpse before, and the peacocks shrieking in the distance are not my first choice of accompaniment. But my hands are still bound, and I'm doing what I can.

For all the gun feels like an extension of me it is pitifully incapable of determining if Dottie's got panties on when I shove the muzzle down under her waistband. But she shivers, clenches her thighs tight around the barrel, and I think it might work either way.

I kiss her again, calculating how to flip us around. If I need to.

She tastes like me, now. I wonder if I taste like her yet.

The barrel nudges downward, scrapes against hair, and then lower down against her cunt, where it meets slick. She's raised herself onto her knees to ease its way.

"Imagine her," I say, because I already am. "Imagine her watching us. Imagine what you'd say when you asked her to join us."

Dottie shakes her head, and I don't know who the tears glittering in her eyes are for. "Used to be you were a smart lady," she says. "Where's the woman who tied me up?"

Anger curls around the arousal spiralling through my veins and it feels good, it feels _right_ for the first time in far too long.

"She's dead," I say, and most of the sadness in my smile is even real. "Didn't you see her die?" She was in and out of my life - of the old Whitney's life - so often, and I didn't expect the thought that she might not have been there for the end to be such a thrill. I slip the gun down, over her clit and inside, and smile as the stretch takes her breath away.

"Just me now. Just the two of us."

She rocks down hard against me, bites at my lips as she tries to take the gun deeper inside without any prompting. She's wet enough that she can take it, not that it would have mattered if she wasn't.

 _Click click_ goes the gun's grip against the chain of my cuffs as we move, and she's still breathing, tiny little gasps against my mouth where I swallow them whole.

My finger's on the trigger and Dottie's in my lap, riding her own gun like we have all the time in the world.

It's all I need.

For now.

 


End file.
